That’s all, I’ve just had it. With women, mostly, for the last sixteen years going all the way back to the first woman I ever dated. I’ve had it with other things, too, but I’ve had it with women especially.

Now I was raised by (and with) women, so I’m not naturally a chauvinist. But I’ll be damned if I haven’t been taught very well to be one by the women I’ve known.

I don’t know. Maybe things are just getting to me tonight, who knows. But I’ve had it. Had it.

—

Ladies, there are four ways to win a man’s love:

1. Be the one person in the world against whom he doesn’t need to defend himself. Make him feel as though he can be honest with you about his hopes, dreams, and fears (because there aren’t many, if any, other places where he can talk about such things).

2. Tell him that you need him, tell him in what ways, and then let him be there for you, even if you probably can do it all yourself.

3. Tell everyone that you’re with him, and show him that you’re proud and glad to have him, as though he’s the best man in the room (even if you know he’s not—and if that’s the case, never ever let him suspect that he’s not).

4. Spend lots of time acknowledging his personhood.

There are also three ways to lose a man’s love:

1. Take him for granted, fail to appreciate the sacrifices that he makes for you, or expect him to continue to make world-shattering sacrifices to the point of self-annihilation, especially if you’re not world-shatteringly thankful each time.

2. Let him feel as though other people might think him an utter fool for staying with you, or worse, as though other people might be making fun of him for staying with you.

3. Test his love to see if it’s real and/or watch for gaps in his love so closely that you wear out his patience utterly by making him feel as though he’s always failing an exam.

4. Spend lots of time accusing him of not acknowledging your personhood.

—

Too often I’ve heard women say that for men, all women are interchangeable, we see them as nothing other than a warm body and an empty head, we don’t notice any difference between them or see any of their individuality, blah, blah, blah.

Ladies: if this were so, we sure as hell wouldn’t sit still and listen to a woman say this shit to our face. We would just move on to the next woman over who was cheap, easy, and quiet as hell so that we didn’t have to hear it yet again, ad infinitium. But it’s not so. We sit there and listen to you berate us about this shit precisely because we want to be with you and we’re even willing to let you throw all this shit in our face, if necessary, in order to spend a little time with the ones we love.

But dammit we have limits. And sometimes women sail dangerously near the wind. And they’re somehow always shocked and dismayed when they realize that they have destroyed a man’s love utterly, for no reason at all.

—

What is this perverse desire in women to say, “Hmm… I wonder what is the precise point at which he will tire of me completely? I won’t be able to rest until I find out…”